Wednesday, July 23, 2014

"Major Announcement" Today

It's game day for Sporting Kansas City as the team takes on BPL Champions, Manchester City in a friendly at Sporting Park. The game though looks like it may not be the biggest news of the day (at least for me). Yesterday, Sporting Club announced that they would have a "major announcement" today that would include the club, Wyandotte County unified government representatives, and Kansas governor Sam Brownback.

The team's release doesn't say what the announcement today is about, the guess that has been made by many in the community is that this is going to have to do with the US training complex that the club had announced the intentions to build in 2013.

To add to that speculation, the training complex was a topic of discussion last week for the Unified Government. The training center would be at 98th and Parallel in Kansas City, Kansas, to the north and east of Sporting Park's current location. The complex would be included in the STAR Bonds that were used to build the Legends and Sporting Park and would anticipate opening in 2015.

The $65 million project would be another big step for Sporting Club in establishing Kansas City as the "Soccer Capital of the USA" that they've called KC since last year. And while in the past I've mocked that name a little bit, the club is certainly working very hard to make that true.

The training complex would include multiple outdoor fields as well as an indoor facility. I'm still hoping that part of the complex will include the re-establishment of the US Soccer Hall of Fame and it's archives, but that may still be wishful thinking.